I need to also add that the update does indeed go through, given the splash screen and the updated build version. Does anyone have any ideas as to what can be causing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

, then python 3.2 launches. I'm pretty sure this has to do with me not having python3.2 set as my system python, instead python 2.6 seems to be my system python instead. In the past I have tried to resolve this with no success.

I'm pretty sure this has to do with me not having python3.2 set as my system python

As long as you have python3 source (libs and headers installed), it does not matter whether py 2 or py 3 is your system python.

I confess I have not played with cmake and blender together, but the 'usual' location for system thingies is /usr.
We are looking for /usr/lib/python3.2. If your python3.2 stuff is installed in /usr/local or somewhere else, you will need to set the paths for cmake.

Doing this is left as an exercise for the reader. (yeah, that is a clever way of saying I do not know how, off the top of my head)

Again, i thank you for the clarity. And once again you're right, /usr/lib/python3.2 is where python should be installed and I can confirm this is where I have it installed. The question seems to be whether or not CMAKE knows that. I have tried to set up a symbolic link in the past only with the result of screwing up my system. So I'm in the same boat you are in not knowing how to do this properly. I'm sure there must be a way to do it through CMAKE as well.

And now, what puzzling me is the fact that I'm getting this error when trying to launch blender 2.5 from the Terminal:

This seems to imply that I do not have python, or at least the path to it is broken. But I have not changed anything since my last build, which obviously needed and found python to succeed..

I followed the Blender wiki instructions on building Python3.3 which is now required to build Blender and installed it to /opt/py33 and amended my paths to point to that and it all compiles fine in that regard. The install_deps.sh script installs the Python3.3 to /opt/lib/python-3.3 so if you use that you'll want to reflect that dir in your user-config.py file if using scons or point to it in your cmake setup.